Time for a flurry
Of mental activity,
The best protection
Is in misdirection,
Sleight of hand,
Slight what understands,
Then the prestige
The accuser is besieged
By distraction,

Its own satisfaction.

Nearly asleep, nearly awake,
When a near memory shakes
Me to pieces.

A second here, a second there,
But the trip left me bare
And restless.

A lone sentinel, do you haunt
My dreams so they can’t taunt
My own memories?

Confused, caved in, even contrite.
Would you visit tonight
So I can sleep?

Autumnal Justice,
And they all fall down.
Baked and brown,
Dry and dusted.

Past the sudden growth,
Bursts of thirst and sun,
Unworn perfection,
Raindrops falling like piano notes,

Every age succumbs,
Worm-eaten or flawless,
Touched by the raw caress
Of what they can become

Before Autumn rises.

Ideas alive, but only to me,
I know I fight what none else see,
But in the depths, inwardly,
I must face the fears that first faced me.

I long for those who forget my ways,
Forget my face, forget the day
I stepped out from the decay
And fell in love with their ways.

Melodramatic, but life can be too.
I wished so hard for you,
But wishes are things we won’t do,
Failures in our follow-through.

Only I may still be haunted
By all these thoughts I’ve flaunted
In the silence of open space, undaunted,
Even while they are so unwanted.

I have these things to say.
Some don’t hear, don’t care
To let me explain. Waiting there,
Abandoned in the rain,
I began my exodus and exile.

I never expected to stay away,
But the stay was different for me.
Transformation, some new way to be,
And I would fly the migration
Back home again.

Always a new me to betray,
I drifted with the tide
In anonymity, I applied
Distance as remedy,
But it cannot heal, just delay.

I see now, there will be a day
I return home
To cease the ache or roam.
Will you forsake
The same old me?

Words, heaps of labels,
Only He
Knows what lies beneath
Truth and fables.

Never wine and roses,
But I remember
The sweet taste of September,
The salt fish in our noses.

I find I’m still scared
I’ll never be
Easy to love, easy to see
So undone, so unprepared.

I waste words like this,
Trying in vain,
To diagnose the rain
That falls because it is.

Overtaxed, over-vexed,
Over-thinking the smallest steps
Everything that’s left
Feels over.

Like a child who believes
In things inconceivable,
We were full and naïve,
Eager to gamble.

We pound hard at the levee
With fist smooth and steady
Finally ready to see
If it can hold strong.

Cracks in the core
Threaten hemorrhage once more
I breathlessly implore
God and the wall.

Only do not make goodbyes,
But look for me in sleep,
In dream, in tides
Of slumber, sweet and deep.

To make two rivers meet,
Where no diverting is forbidden.
Water’s clumsy feet
Leaves that frost unbitten.

I will wait for you, if time
Grays my eyes and breath.
Fling down this dam, this crime,
That diverts this stream to death.

A simple word, but all these years
Whispered in passing, or none at all.
A coward with a duffel bag of fears,
I learned the run before the crawl.

A simple word I thought meant death,
Marinated in the lost and aching wish,
Better constrained beneath the breath,
But every divorce means relationship.

A simple word for change of seasons.
How many new colors graced my plumes?
Each shade a stranger hue of treason
I painted on the ever paler moon.

A simple word, but cursed the same.
Memories are caricatures- flat and bland.
Colorless photographs of flame
Can’t burn, or hiss, or spew hot brands.

A simple word, but for the downpour.
Will the world ever cease to gray?
Rainy days were mine before,
Now you occupy my dismay.

A simple word… so hard to say.